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Notes -
From the Russian side, I can attest to having been fed a trickle of memes since childhood that cast them in a role of a sort of mild ancestral enemy, more specifically something like a vindictive envious distant relative who is stalking you and perpetually scheming to get their comeuppance if you are down on your luck. (Similarly-flavoured trope is that of the nasty relatives who appear out of nowhere to try to cheat the children out of the family inheritance after the reclusive patriarch died. Think wildbow's Pact.)
A particular one I remember is the story of the False Dmitrys, when Russia was thrown into crisis by Ivan the Terrible's dynasty dying out without leaving a male heir. The last heir, one Dmitry, died under unclear circumstances, and rule passed to a regent (Godunov) that at least some early modern historiography chose to interpret as "best thing to happen to Russia in a while, but tragically sabotaged at every turn due to lack of royal pedigree". Royalists coped with stories that Dmitry actually survived (in that version, typically a cowardly assassination attempt by the low-born Godunov). These stories were picked up and answered by a series of pretenders claiming to actually be the surviving Dmitry, who supposedly actually fled to Poland and secured the gracious backing of the local nobility. Each of the pretenders strutted into Russia as what was basically a Polish-backed civil war faction to try and seize the throne (at least the first one briefly succeeded), adding internal strife to what was already a difficult period involving famines and external wars (including one against Poland). This, it was made clear to me, was something that the Poles would just naturally do, because they could not possibly let a chance to make Russians suffer go by unused.
(Some details may be wrong; I'm ultimately very uneducated regarding Russian history and am just trying to recount what stuck from informal cultural programming.)
This is a more or less accurate summary of the Dmitriads. One of the more darkly amusing sequence of events in world history (set in motion by Ivan the Terrible randomly murdering his only non-retarded son). Highly recommend reading about the whole episode in detail for anyone into history for the entertainment value.
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